1CBS News for Android Tablets

The CBS News app for Android tablets appears to be a WAP page from 2006. This is true of many CBS properties on Android tablets - the CNET and TechRepublic apps are just as bad. Notice how about halfway down the screen, it just gives up.

4CollegeHumor for iPad

5CNN for Android Tablets

CNN is a rare example of a major brand that actually put some thought into an Android tablet app. As you can see here, Android tablet apps don't have to be uglier or less usable than iPad apps. They can be gorgeous.

6CNN for iPad

I actually prefer CNN's Android app to this iPad app, because the Android app has the persistent list of categories on the left hand side. That's arguable, but hey, this is the world I'd love to have: where we can debate iPad and Android tablet apps on equal terms. We do not live in that world yet.

10eBay for iPad

11Facebook for Android Tablets

Facebook was one of the examples Apple CEO Tim Cook called out at the iPad launch, and he's right; this app is shameful. It's obviously designed for very small screens, and wastes huge amounts of space on a tablet. Considering Facebook is Alexa's #2 Web destination in the U.S., that matters.

12Facebook for iPad

What's funny about Facebook for iPad is that you can see how it started out looking similar to the Android app, but then the designers said, "hey, we have this extra couple of hundred pixels over here! Let's do something!" Why couldn't they do that on Android?

14TBS for iPad

15Twitter for Android Tablets

Twitter was Tim Cook's other example of a bad Android tablet app. Yes, there are third-party Twitter clients, but TweetDeck isn't much better - it also doesn't use the screen space to maximum advantage.

18Vevo for iPad

19Wikipedia for Android Tablets

There's an official Wikipedia app for Android tablets, but none for iPad. I don't think that matters, because this Wikipedia app looks so bad. It appears to be Wikipedia's mobile Web site, displayed on a 1200-wide screen capable of showing the full desktop site. The app would probably look great on a 480-by-320 screen, but that's the tragedy of most of these apps.